The Yellow Crayon eBook

“Reginald Brott is a man, at any rate, and an
honest one,” she answered. “But
I am too selfish to think much of him. It is
myself whom I pity. I have a home, Prince, and
a husband. I want them both.”

“You amaze me,” the Prince said slowly.
“Lucille, indeed, you amaze me. You have
been buried alive for three years. Positively
we believed that our summons would sound to you like
a message from Heaven.”

Lucille was silent for a moment. She rubbed
the mist from the carriage window and looked out into
the streets.

“Well,” she said, “I hope that you
realise now how completely you have misunderstood
me. I was perfectly happy in America. I
have been perfectly miserable here. I suppose
that I have grown too old for intrigues and adventures.”

“Too old, Lucille,” the Prince murmured,
leaning a little towards her. “Lucille,
you are the most beautiful woman in London. Many
others may have told you so, but there is no one, Lucille,
who is so devotedly, so hopelessly your slave as I.”

She drew her hand away, and sat back in her corner.
The man’s hot breath fell upon her cheek, his
eyes seemed almost phosphorescent in the darkness.
Lucille could scarcely keep the biting words from
her tongue.

“You do not answer me, Lucille. You do
not speak even a single kind word to me. Come!
Surely we are old friends. We should understand
one another. It is not a great deal that I ask
from your kindness—­not a great deal to
you, but it is all the difference between happiness
and misery for me.”

“This is a very worn-out game, Prince,”
Lucille said coldly. “You have been making
love to women in very much the same manner for twenty
years, and I—­well, to be frank, I am utterly
weary of being made love to like a doll. Laugh
at me as you will, my husband is the only man who
interests me in the slightest. My failure to-day
is almost welcome to me. It has at least brought
my work here to a close. Come, Prince, if you
want to earn my eternal gratitude, tell me now that
I am a free woman.”

“You give me credit,” the Prince said
slowly, “for great generosity. If I let
you go it seems to me that I shall lose you altogether.
You will go to your husband. He will take you
away!”

“Why not?” Lucille asked. “I
want to go. I am tired of London. You cannot
lose what you never possessed—­what you never
had the slightest chance of possessing.”

The Prince laughed softly—­not a pleasant
laugh, not even a mirthful one.

“Dear lady,” he said, “you speak
not wisely. For I am very much in earnest when
I say that I love you, and until you are kinder to
me I shall not let you go.”

“That is rather a dangerous threat, is it not?”
Lucille asked. “You dare to tell me openly
that you will abuse your position, that you will keep
me bound a servant to the cause, because of this foolish
fancy of yours?”